The mission of the Cancer Center Peptide Synthesis and Design Core Facility is to (i) foster collaborations between Cancer Center investigators who utilize peptides in their research and (ii) provide peptides to support investigators' projects that involve protein-protein interactions for the study of tumor cell recognition of the extracellular matrix, cell differentiation, induction of cell signaling pathways and gene induction, and cancer immunology. The Peptide Synthesis Facility has also been developing novel peptides and analogs for use as anti-cancer therapeutics. These include: (i) conformationally constrained peptides and mini-proteins that are both resistant to proteolysis and specifically target tumor cell receptors and (ii) peptide-amphiphiles that form liposomes, which in turn are used as drug delivery vehicles targeted for tumor cell receptors. The Peptide Synthesis and Design Core Facility is composed of an Applied Biosystems 431A Peptide Synthesizer, a Gilson AMS 422 Multiple Peptide Synthesizer, a Beckman System 990 Peptide Synthesizer, an Applied Biosystems 477A Protein Sequencer/120A Analyzer, A Beckman P/ACE System 5000 Capillary Electrophoresis Apparatus, 2 Rainin preparative HPLC systems including fraction collectors, 2 Beckman System Gold preparative HPLC systems, and a Hewlett Packard Series II 1090 AminoWant HPLC.